” It’s yet another year of low morale and dwindling workplace satisfaction in government agencies. The annual “Best Places to Work” rankings, released Tuesday by the Partnership for Public Service, show that federal employees’ satisfaction and commitment are at their lowest point ever since the analysis began, in 2003. The government-wide employee engagement score is 57 out of 100, compared with the private sector’s score of 72 out of 100.

” There has been a failure of leadership,” says Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service. His organization compiles the rankings by analyzing data from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, which nearly 400 agencies and their subcomponents administered to their workforce this year.

The gap between worker satisfaction in the private sector versus the public sector has nearly tripled since 2010. As morale in the former has ticked upward following the recession, morale in the latter has continued to slide downward.”

” President Barack Obama is out of gas. Pooped out. Gone fishing. Or rather, golfing. He’s just not that into it anymore. The republic is safe from any further vast left-wing legislative prescriptions for our ills.

But Obama’s increasing job fatigue is, paradoxically, cause for serious concern. While he sits back, aides in the White House and in the agencies are busy enacting a stealth agenda of rules and regulations. And on the world stage, Washington’s withdrawal threatens national security.

The president on display at Tuesday’s State of the Union is one who has shrunk from the pretension of becoming a president on the order of Ronald Reagan or Franklin Roosevelt into the purveyor of a list of puny policies that tinker at the margins.

Instead of offering “fundamental change” and inspirational hope, Obama made increasing the minimum wage for federal contractors the centerpiece of this year’s address. The increasingly disinterested president even had trouble pronouncing the name of his other “big idea,” a limited savings vehicle the White House is calling a “MyRA.”

Major issues like debt, deficit and entitlements? Fuhgetaboutit, way too much bother.”

Leadership having never been his forte , it all comes down to passing the buck and laying blame .

” Obama and his advisers grieve to a sympathetic press that Republicans are to blame for the impasse in Congress. This even as “moderate Democrat” has become an oxymoron and the president touts his crowning left-wing achievement, Obamacare, which he jammed through Congress without convincing a single Republican — they can’t all be right-wing “extremists” — to vote for it.”

“I won” isn’t a successful governing strategy…

” A republic is intended to be a fractious form of government. Successful legislators, like Reagan and Bill Clinton, knew how to hold their own party’s ranks while picking off enough of the opposition to pass laws.

Obama was never particularly interested in building the relationships needed to curry favor, call in chits and twist arms. But now, he’s finished even pretending.”

As comforting as the thought of an ineffectual President Obama is , it needs to be tempered against the frightening reality that the bureaucrats , regulators and administrators that he has put in place over the past five years are firmly entrenched and churning out decrees , mandates and edicts at an alarming rate . Read the whole thing .

” If we reach the following highly unpleasant conclusion, what are the implications?

The United States has taken a political turn which, at least for the next four years, will guarantee that it does not play the role of a great power mindful of and willing to protect its own true interests, to support its allies, and to combat its real foes. On the contrary, through inaction or active effort the leadership of America will take counterproductive actions that achieve the opposite result. And there are certain factors — radical ideological hegemony, a weak economy and growing debt, structural social changes, the weakness and disorganization of the opposition — that may make this situation regarding America’s international behavior and policies a long-term, partly irreversible condition. In other words, we don’t know if America is finished as the world’s leading power, but we do know that it will not have leadership and certainly not leadership in a good direction for a while and perhaps will never fully recover.

So what do those outside the United States do to face this situation? (Please note that I am speaking here only of U.S. foreign policy and just remarking on the domestic situation.)

There are those readers who would contest the accuracy of this statement. They will say that Barack Obama is a great president, or at least a decent one, and there is no big prob. lem regarding U.S. foreign policy at all. In fact, he and his team, which now includes Secretary of State-designate John Kerry, will be just fine, or at least okay. They will make the point — valid, but irrelevant — that the United States doesn’t control everything in the world . “

” Here’s how he might play this when Benghazi comes up (or he brings it up himself)…“It’s all well and good that Secretary Clinton is taking responsibility but my leadership experience has taught me that only the person at the top of the organization is truly responsible. President Obama is at the top of the Executive Branch and he’s ducking responsibility. I’d like to know if the President agrees with the Secretary and if he does, why hasn’t he asked for her resignation? If he doesn’t agree, why doesn’t he say who is responsible? Most importantly, why hasn’t he taken responsibility from Day 1. Harry Truman didn’t say the buck stopped at the Department of State, it stopped at his desk in the Oval Office.”

And then it will get ugly for Obama when Romney adds, “And who does the President blame for the failure of his policies to get this economy going? The Secretary of the Treasury? Maybe he blames you the voters for not paying enough in taxes. This country needs a President who accepts the responsibility that comes with the job and doesn’t blame his subordinates.”